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Kurtley Beale's Force send hapless Crusaders to Super Rugby bottom
By AAP
The Western Force have heaped more pain on the Crusaders and dragged themselves off the bottom of the Super Rugby Pacific ladder with a potentially season-turning 37-15 bonus-point victory over the fallen champions in Perth.
Former Wallabies star Kurtley Beale made a triumphant debut for the WA franchise in his first Super Rugby outing since 2020 as the Force notched their first win over the Crusaders in more than a decade.
The momentous 37-15 victory in the bottom-of-the-table encounter at HBF Park on Saturday night reignited the Force's finals hopes after a one-from-seven start to the season and left the Crusaders' title defence in tatters.
The most prolific champions in Super history with a dozen titles since the competition's inception in 1996, the Crusaders now face the ignominy of going from winners to wooden spooners after a disastrous start to their 2024 campaign.
In what would have been unthinkable before the season kicked off, the Crusaders are now dead last after winning only one of their first eight games.
It's an alarming scenario for embattled coach Rob Penney, who three years ago presided over the opening five games of the NSW Waratahs' historic first-ever winless season.
While Penney must be stressing, Force coach Simon Cron is plotting a path to the finals after his side moved to within a victory of the top eight with their first success over the Crusaders since 2013.
Chase Tiatia goes over for a try as the Western Force power to a convincing win over the Crusaders. (HANDOUT/Western Force)
And they did it despite spending 10 minutes of the first half a man down following the sin-binning of flanker Carlo Tizzano.
Wallabies World Cup halfback Nic White was unable to contain his excitement for Beale, who was front and centre in the Force's win in his first Super match in almost four years.
On debut for the Force after being cleared of sexual assault charges, the 35-year-old one-time world player of the year nominee was brilliant at fullback.
"His communication is phenomenal," White said.
"Right from the first training session to this game, it's just his guidance is helping Donno (five-eighth Ben Donaldson), helping our centres.
"Having a gut like that, eh?"
Jubilant Force coach Cron, a former assistant at the NSW Waratahs, said he was stoked about Beale answering his SOS call last week.
"KB and I go back a little bit," Cron said.
"And when I gave him the phone call, it was a pretty easy conversation and he jumped on the plane with Maddy, his wife, and their son.
"Watching him at training on Thursday, he just glides, his timing.
"But also what he gives to our boys is from the back three. It gives some experience, and it gives them some chat.
"So he helps Hamish (Stewart). He helps Donno (Ben Donaldson). He helps chase on the edge.
"I just don't think you can underestimate what he does with his voice."
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Like I've said before about your idea (actually it might have been something to do with mine, I can't remember), I like that teams will a small sustainable league focus can gain the reward of more consistent CC involvement. I'd really like the most consistent option available.
Thing is, I think rugby can do better than footballs version. I think for instance I wanted everyone in it to think they can win it, where you're talking about the worst teams not giving up because they are so far off the pace we get really bad scoreline when that and giving up to concentrate on the league is happening together.
So I really like that you could have a way to remedy that, but personally I would want my model to not need that crutch. Some of this is the same problem that football has. I really like the landscape in both the URC and Prem, but Ireland with Leinster specifically, and France, are a problem IMO. In football this has turned CL pool stages in to simply cash cow fixtures for the also ran countries teams who just want to have a Real Madrid or ManC to lose to in their pool for that bumper revenue hit. It's always been a comp that had suffered for real interest until the knockouts as well (they might have changed it in recent years?).
You've got some great principles but I'm not sure it's going to deliver on that hard hitting impact right from the start without the best teams playing in it. I think you might need to think about the most minimal requirement/way/performance, a team needs to execute to stay in the Champions Cup as I was having some thougt about that earlier and had some theory I can't remember. First they could get entry by being a losing quarter finalist in the challenge, then putting all their eggs in the Champions pool play bucket in order to never finish last in their pool, all the while showing the same indifference to their league some show to EPCR rugby now, just to remain in champions. You extrapolate that out and is there ever likely to be more change to the champions cup that the bottom four sides rotate out each year for the 4 challenge teams? Are the leagues ever likely to have the sort of 'flux' required to see some variation? Even a good one like Englands.
I'd love to have a table at hand were you can see all the outcomes, and know how likely any of your top 12 teams are going break into Champions rubyg on th back it it are?
Go to commentsYou always get idiots who go overboard. What else is new? I ignore them. Why bother?
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